Murder Superior

by Jane Haddam

  “Gregor Demarkian is always dangerous,” Norm said.

  “I’m glad you’re coming,” Sarabess said.

  Norm was glad he was coming, too. He was also glad he had an automatic lock button on his console that worked the door, because without it he would never have made it out of his chair in time to make sure Steve couldn’t get into the booth. His phone had three separate lines, too, which meant that he didn’t have to answer the one Steve was going to call him on any minute now just to get a line free to call out. He picked up his phone and called his car, from which his driver answered in a sleepy voice that indicated he’d been camped out in the driver’s seat waiting to go home. Norm considered the fact that staying up all night on no cocaine at all was practically as tiring as staying up with all you could snort, and what that fact meant for his future. It might mean nothing. Sarabess was organic, but Norm thought he could talk her out of that. He thought he could talk her into a haircut, too.

  He told his driver to be at the south elevator door to the garage in fifteen minutes. Then he hung up, waited for a dial tone, and punched in the number for the local police. He had that number—along with the fire department, the FBI, the state capitol, the Roman Catholic Chancery, and the offices of the Philadelphia branch of White People’s liberation—on an automatic dial pad. He kept them on an automatic dial pad because he sometimes used them on his show. He could still remember the day he had called the Chancery pretending to be the Pope and caused a scandal so bad, the Papal Legate had come to visit him at the studio.

  The phone was picked up on the police end by a young woman with a voice like strawberry syrup. Norman Kevic contemplated the ceiling of his booth and thought of green stains on white tablecloths and flowers wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with bright blue bows. The young woman went through her patented spiel about which branch of which government service he might actually be looking for, and then Norm told her.

  “I’m looking for Jack Androcetti? I have some information for him about a homicide he’s working on?”

  That, of course, was not entirely accurate, but it would get him put through to Androcetti, and that was really all Norm cared about.

  After he’d had his little talk, he could go out to the car and get driven over to St. Elizabeth’s, where he would do his best to protect Sarabess and be on hand for any breaking developments at the same time.

  Jack Androcetti, he thought, and made a face.

  At least Jack Androcetti was better than Gregor Demarkian.

  2

  FATHER STEPHEN MONAGHAN HAD seen many odd things in his day, but he thought the oddest was certainly this gathering of the tribes that had begun taking place on the sidewalk outside of St. Teresa’s House and was now spilling into the foyer and out the back of the reception room door. It wasn’t a gathering of the Order. The Order was still as large as it had ever been, and still as ubiquitous on this campus. Coming over to St. Teresa’s House from the little landscaping shed where he had finally found Frank Moretti, Father Stephen had seen dozens of them, in pairs and triples, walking on every available walkable surface. Their black veils flapped in the wind and their rosaries made an odd clacking noise whenever they were brushed by the wind. Father Stephen was reminded of the days before Vatican II, when he had said Mass every other Sunday at the chapel of the Motherhouse of a large Order of religious women based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Sisters had come to and from chapel, to and from meals, to and from sleep, in perfect ordered rows, clacking all the way.

  Frank Moretti didn’t remember the Church before Vatican II. Frank was only twenty-three, and he thought of all nuns as sort of odd. There was no religious awe in all of this. The young gardener thought of all virgins as odd as a matter of course.

  They found Gregor Demarkian in the foyer, lying flat on the floor with his ear to the tiles, squinting into the dust in that place where the wall and floor joined. Since Reverend Mother General was also squinting into that same joint—although she was still standing; Father Stephen didn’t think Reverend Mother would ever go crawling around on the floor—Father Stephen didn’t think the dust would be there very long. Father Stephen waited while Demarkian sighed, stood up, and brushed off his suit. Father Stephen got the distinct impression that Gregor Demarkian was the kind of man who put on a suit as soon as he got up in the morning, no matter what he expected to do with his day. Demarkian looked around, looked at Father Stephen and Frank, and sighed.

  “I don’t suppose you two have come to tell me about how you lost a knife,” he said.

  “A knife?” Father Stephen said.

  “I don’t deal in knives,” Frank Moretti said. “I don’t deal in guns, either, and I’m not exactly fond of blunt instruments. People can get hurt.”

  “I suppose they can,” Father Stephen said. Then he did his best to put this conversation back on track. “We heard you were here,” he said, “and you were asking about anything that might have gone on that day—it was yesterday, I can’t believe it was only yesterday—that was odd. And there was something odd. Frank can tell you.”

  “It was odd but it wasn’t important,” Frank said.

  “What was it?” Gregor Demarkian looked interested.

  Father Stephen nudged Frank in the elbow. Somehow, this wasn’t working out the way he’d expected it to. He’d been all excited when he’d heard Demarkian was here, and the Archbishop, too. It had felt as if they were all finally beginning to get their own back, after the way that dreadful young man had behaved to everyone and then gone off and told the newspapers about it. Now they were standing in the middle of the foyer with nuns all around them and other people, too, and it was—well, disorganized.

  Gregor Demarkian had gone to the doors that separated the foyer from the reception room and was muttering under his breath. Father Stephen marched up to him and touched him on the shoulder.

  “It was only the theft of some plant food,” he said bravely, “but that’s very strange, isn’t it? Who would want to steal plant food?”

  “Plant food,” Gregor Demarkian said. He looked straight at Frank Moretti. “Where was this plant food stolen from?”

  “Right across the way there,” Frank said. “There’s a shed, a landscaping shed, out behind St. Patrick’s Hall. It’s not far.”

  “What goes on in St. Patrick’s Hall?” Demarkian asked.

  “Classes, mostly,” Father Stephen said. “But this was Sunday, Mr. Demarkian. No one was there.”

  “Was the plant food stolen on Sunday?” Demarkian asked. “Could you be sure of that?”

  “It could have been Saturday afternoon or Saturday night,” Frank Moretti said. “I saw the thing just after lunch Saturday and it was all right. But it’s like I told the Father, Mr. Demarkian. It was probably one of them nuns. I mean, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? And one of them probably has a plant that’s not doing too well because she overfeeds and overwaters it and overeverything elses it, too, if you see what I mean, and—”

  “Does either one of you know anything at all about the new field house?”

  Father Stephen looked at Frank Moretti. Frank Moretti looked at Father Stephen. It was one of those questions and neither of them knew what to do with it. Father Stephen looked helplessly around the foyer and his eyes came to rest on Reverend Mother General and Sister Scholastica and Mother Mary Bellarmine.

  “Oh,” he said. “If you want to know about the field house, you should talk to Mother Mary Bellarmine. She’s some kind of expert.”

  “All I know about the field house is that they’re digging a hole for it out on Sunset Hill, and it’s playing Hell with my grass,” Frank Moretti said.

  “I don’t want an expert,” Gregor said. “I want your impressions. Has either of you ever heard of a man named Henry Hare?”

  “Oh, dear, yes,” Father Stephen said.

  “He’s a jerk,” Frank Moretti said.

  “Frank,” Fattier Stephen said.

  “He is a jerk,” Frank Moretti insist
ed. “I don’t think it matters so much if he cuts a few corners, if you know what I mean, everybody does these days or nothing would ever get built, but he kids himself about it. It’s like he’s got to con himself worse than he’s got to con everybody else.”

  “I thought that was the point of Mother Mary Bellarmine,” Gregor said. “I thought she was supposed to be impossible to con.”

  “That’s certainly what I’ve heard,” Father Stephen said. “Oh, yes. She is supposed to know everything there is to know about building campus buildings. There is that.”

  Gregor Demarkian folded his arms across his chest and seemed to go off into his own little world. This was not criminal detection the way Father Stephen wanted criminal detection. This was not Nero Wolfe in his chair or Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass. It was Sister Joan Esther who was dead and it was Sister Joan Esther that Father Stephen thought they should be concentrating on. He watched as Demarkian started pacing, stopped, and started again. By the time Demarkian stopped the second time, Father Stephen was so tense, he jumped.

  “Let me ask you two something,” Demarkian said. “There’s been a suggestion made, in more than one quarter, that the wrong woman was murdered here yesterday afternoon. Does either of you think that’s possible?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Father Stephen said, “with God.”

  “Fine. The projected victim—in case Sister Joan Esther was not meant to be the victim—would be a nun named Mother Mary Bellarmine—”

  Frank Moretti started to choke.

  “—and the reason for her choice as a victim would be what she knows or may know about the financing of the new field house and Henry Hare’s possible involvement with unjustifiable aspects of that financing. Does that scenario sound plausible to you?”

  Father Stephen thought immediately of the confessions he had heard, the stream of frustration and hate that flowed in Mother Mary Bellarmine’s direction the way the needle of a compass flowed north, and blushed.

  “Well,” he said. “If it had been Mother Mary Bellarmine who had died, I do believe I would have found it less—less outrageous.”

  “I don’t know Mother Mary Bellarmine,” Frank Moretti said.

  “But there hasn’t been any suggestion that there is anything wrong with the financing of the field house,” Father Stephen pointed out “Really, Mr. Demarkian, I’ve only heard good things about that project.”

  “Mmm,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  “And Henry Hare isn’t a crook,” Frank Moretti pointed out “I didn’t say he was. I just said he cut the usual corners and lied to himself about it.”

  “Mmm,” Gregor Demarkian said again.

  Father Stephen looked at Frank Moretti and found Frank looking back. This was really too much. It really was. Sister Agnes Bernadette was distraught, and that awful young policeman was likely to come back at any moment. Father Stephen had heard wonderful things about Gregor Demarkian, but now he wasn’t sure he believed any of them.

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” he said querulously. “You can’t believe Sister Agnes Bernadette committed a murder. You can’t believe—well, I don’t know how to go into what you can’t believe.”

  “I don’t believe Sister Agnes Bernadette committed a murder,” Gregor said pleasantly.

  “Well, then,” Father Stephen said. “Why don’t you find out who did?”

  “But I already know who did.”

  “What?” Father Stephen said.

  “I already know who did,” Gregor repeated patiently. “I knew who did yesterday. There was only one possible explanation. But that doesn’t get us anywhere, does it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” Gregor said, “I have a knife to find, for one thing. And then I’ve got to talk to Nancy Hare. And then I’ve got to find some way around lieutenant Androcetti, and then—well, you see what I mean.”

  “No,” Father Stephen said, and it was true. He didn’t see anything. He didn’t understand the first thing about what was going on. Had somebody really tried to kill Mother Mary Bellarmine and killed Sister Joan Esther by mistake? And what did it mean if somebody had?

  Father Stephen could certainly see someone murdering Mother Mary Bellarmine more easily than he could see someone murdering Sister Joan Esther, but then he hadn’t really known Joan Esther except to wave hello to and she might have been a harridan when she was out of public view. He did think that before Vatican II, she wouldn’t have been murdered at all. It was all very confusing.

  On the other side of the foyer, Mother Mary Bellarmine was standing alone, contemplating the proceedings with a malevolent eye, and Father Stephen shuddered.

  3

  “…ALREADY KNOWS WHO DID it,” Martha Mary was saying, looking out the window of St. Thomas’s Hall to the front steps of St. Teresa’s House. “I heard him say so myself. And he’s looking for a knife. Oh, Domenica, really, we’ve got to tell him—”

  “Tell him what?” Sister Domenica Anne demanded in annoyance. “That I lost a razor?”

  “An X-Acto knife,” Martha Mary said. “I bet it’s just the kind of thing he’s looking for. And you know what it’s going to be about, don’t you? It’s going to be about the field house. I heard him. It wasn’t Joan Esther who was supposed to be murdered at all. It was Mother Mary Bellarmine—”

  “Well, there certainly would have been enough suspects if that had happened.” Domenica Anne shook her head.

  Martha Mary sparkled. “And guess what,” she said. “Guess what it’s all going to come down to. The field house!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The field house,” Martha Mary said. “I heard them, Dom, I really did. It’s all going to come down to some kind of financial hanky-panky Henry Hare has been pulling with the field house and Mother Mary Bellarmine found out about it and now—”

  “Bullshit,” Sister Domenica Anne said.

  Martha Mary was shocked. “Dom,” she said, “you said, you said—”

  “I said shit,” Domenica Anne said, “and I meant shit. There isn’t a single thing wrong with the financing for that field house except that we don’t have enough of it and we never do so so what?”

  “But Dom—”

  “But Dom nothing,” Domenica Anne said. She looked at her regulation habit shawl thrown over the back of the director’s chair she used for drafting and decided the day was too hot for it. Heaven only knew why she had brought it over here to begin with. She grabbed her keys and hooked them onto her belt instead.

  “I have,” she told Martha Mary, in as calm a tone as she wanted to manage, which was not calm at all, “put up with the intolerable, the impossible and the outrageous for over a week now in order to let that woman go over the plans for my field house project. My project, Martha, remember that, I’ve been working on it for two solid years. I know every dime we’ve spent or promised to spend. I know every foot of lumber we’ve bought or promised to buy. I think Henry Hare is a slug that belongs under a rock—and I dearly wish his own wife would put him there—but he hasn’t been cheating us because I’ve made sure he hasn’t been cheating us. I have taken all I am going to take. If that woman thinks she’s going to use Joan Esther’s dead body and my work as opportunities for self-aggrandizement, she’s got another think coming.”

  “But Dom,” Martha Mary wailed. “It isn’t Mother Mary Bellarmine who was saying those things. It was Gregor Demarkian.”

  “And who do you think put those things in Gregor Demarkian’s head?” Domenica Anne demanded. “Oh, I could just—well, I’m not going to tell you what I could just do. Let’s go.”

  “Where?” Martha Mary looked frantically around the large attic room, panicked. “Where can we go?”

  “To Gregor Demarkian, of course,” Domenica Anne said. “To get all this straightened out.”

  “To get what straightened out? Are you going to tell him about the X-Acto knife?”

  “Why not? Martha, in the name of our Lord Jesus Chr
ist, will you please move it?”

  “Dom.” Martha Mary was even more shocked than she had been before.

  Outside there was the sound of squealing tires and the heavy bump that meant a pair of cars in slow collision. Domenica Anne strode to her window and looked out on the road in front of the sidewalk in front of St. Teresa’s House, where a pair of long black limousines had rammed into each other, front to front, just hard enough to cause broken headlights and minor crumples. Behind the white limousine a small Mercedes had pulled up and braked just in time not to be damaged. Nancy Hare was emerging from the undamaged car with a smile on her face that had a great deal in common with the smile on the Mona Lisa’s.

  “Wonderful,” Domenica Anne said sourly. “Nancy Hare, Henry Hare, and Norman Kevic.”

  “What?”

  Martha Mary rushed to the window and looked out. The two men were standing face to face, raising their fists in the air. Nancy was standing off to one side, doubled up with laughter.

  “Come on,” Domenica Anne said. “Let’s go join the war.”

  Chapter 7

  1

  THERE WAS AN ALCOVE that jutted out over the front door from the second floor of St. Teresa’s House, and when Gregor Demarkian was finished looking through broom closets he stood in it. From the windows there he could see the cars pulling up to the curb outside and the people getting out. He noted the separate arrivals of Nancy and Henry Hare with some amusement. This whole situation made him feel a little uneasy, in spite of the fact that it was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe it was the fact that nothing before had ever been the way it was supposed to be that gave him pause. Reverend Mother General and the Archbishop had come out on the steps. Reverend Mother General paced back and forth the way school principals will when they have to think of something awful to do to someone and can’t. Gregor couldn’t remember how many lectures he had given about how murder cases had to be solved in the first forty-eight hours, about how physical evidence was much more important than the psychological kind, about how what must be true must be true no matter how strange it might seem. In his career, he could remember fewer than three men who had been convicted on physical evidence, and fewer than half a dozen whose guilt had been determined in the first forty-eight hours. As for the strangenesses, that was something else. Everything was strange. Just behind him, at the head of the narrow flight of steps leading down to the equally narrow corridor off the foyer, there was a gigantic poster, the one Gregor thought of as the granddaddy of all posters for Mother’s Day as Mary’s Day. Maybe he should have put that as the “grandmother” of all posters. It was at least as tall as he was, propped up against a wall with a rubber door stopper at its feet to keep it from falling over. It showed the Madonna standing on a cloud and holding the Child in the air. The Child had a crown and a scepter and a face that was at least fifty years old. Gregor wondered if women had once looked on their sons in this way, or if this was a male distortion of memory, what men thought their childhoods had been about. At the bottom of the poster were the words,